Quote of the Day (Andrew Brown)

“When I became a religious affairs correspondent, and started to meet Christian intellectuals, I came to realise that some at least believed nothing I found abhorrent or ridiculous. They no more take the Bible as a work of history than I do. There were some with whom I could and can talk seriously in the confidence that we understand the world in almost exactly the same light and see it disfigured by the same shadows” (Andrew Brown, “Why I Am Not A Christian“).

I agreed with almost all of Brown’s article. But then he spoiled it with the obligatory slap at Dawkins: “the Dawkinsian view that the problem of suffering is an illusion generated by the illusion of God.”Suffering is an intellectual problem, if at all, only for those who believe the world in some sense “ought” to be completely good. Those people are usually theists. It is a practical and an emotional problem for everyone, and I cannot believe Dawkins ever denied that.

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